Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Troops Don't Buy Bush's Bull

Bush has repeatedly argued that a premature withdrawal from Iraq would dishonour the US troops who have died in Iraq. But a rare opinion poll of US military personnel in Iraq released on Tuesday suggested that only a quarter of US troops agreed with their commander-in-chief.

Now THAT'S a mandate - to shut the hell up and get the hell out.

I give it until the end of 2006. If he doesn't pull out of Iraq, he'll be thrown out of office.

INDIA: George Bush Go Home

I don't often gloat for the sake of gloating, but this was too good not to share:

Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian Government to lay flowers at Rajghat . . . But when George Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.

We really would prefer that he didn't.

It's not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will. The Government, the Police and the Corporate Press will do everything they can to minimise the extent of our outrage. Nothing the Happynews Papers say can change the fact that all over India from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes — George W. Bush, incumbent President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.

Iran proposes to Japan

In a surprise move to stem mounting international pressure against it, Iran invited Japan to take part in its nuclear energy program.

Manouchehr Mottaki, on a worldwide tour amid a standoff on Tehran's nuclear drive, said he made the request personally to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"I requested the Japanese prime minister for the participation of Japanese companies in our 10 to 15 nuclear plant establishments because we have to create 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power plants," he said.

While Japan "called on Iran to conform with international resolutions on its nuclear program" and voiced "special concerns as the only nation to have suffered nuclear attack" . . .

Japan has close economic ties with Tehran. In 2004 Japan inked a two billion-dollar contract to develop Azadegan in southwestern Iran, considered one of the world's biggest untapped oil reserves.

This suggests the invitation might be considered seriously. Moreover, the move by Iran to openly invite another member of the UN Security Council to participate commercially in its nuclear energy plans is nothing less than a diplomatic stroke of genius.

Draining the Swamp

You know it's about to get ugly when a currency analyst at one of the biggest banks in the world flatly admits it.

"It's going to come to an end later this year and it's going to be ugly, even if we haven't reached the shake-out just yet," [said David Bloom, currency analyst at HSBC]

"People have a Panglossian belief in the march of global capitalism but that will change as soon as attention switches back to US financial imbalances," he said.

He attributes the coming disaster to simultaneous moves by central banks across the globe to close the taps of ultra-cheap credit which in turn will bring what he calls the 'carry trade' to a crashing halt.

The "carry trade" - as it is known - is a near limitless cash machine for banks and hedge funds. They can borrow at near zero interest rates in Japan, or 1pc in Switzerland, to re-lend anywhere in the world that offers higher yields, whether Argentine notes or US mortgage securities.

Please note, that (1) the 'near limitless cash machine' is nothing but counterfeiting on a global scale; (2) only banks and hedge funds have access to this "free" money; and (3) this entire global network of parasitoids ultimately feeds off the sweat of workers around the world.

Arguably, [this carry trade] has prolonged asset bubbles everywhere, blunting the efforts of the US and other central banks to restrain over-heating in their own countries.

The Bank of International Settlements last year estimated the turnover in exchange and interest rates derivatives markets at $2,400bn a day.

"The carry trade has pervaded every single instrument imaginable, credit spreads, bond spreads: everything is poisoned."

Let that sink into your brain, for a moment. $2.4 TRILLION in derivatives is traded EVERY day! That's more than the total GDP of the UK (PDF) for the entire year of 2004!

And when this pie in the sky comes crashing down, these parasites are going to try to minimize their losses by sucking everything they can out of the physical economy.

"There are several hundred billion dollars of positions in the carry trade that will be unwound as soon as they become unprofitable," said Stephen Lewis, an economist at Monument Securities. "When the Bank of Japan starts tightening we may see some spectacular effects. The world has never been through this before, so there is a high risk of mistakes."

Toshihiko Fukui, the Japanese central bank governor, gave a fresh warning yesterday that this day is near, saying the country was pulling out of seven years of deflation. The economy grew at a 5.5pc rate in the fourth quarter of 2005.

In his strongest words yet, he said the bank would act "immediately" to curtail its extra injections of liquidity, preparing the way for rate rises above zero in coming months.

"The moment of truth is approaching,'' said Kenichiro Ikezawa of Daiwa SB.

* * *

Most of the world is now tightening, with no sign of a fresh credit window opening to keep the game going. This is new. Japan has had the tap on continuously as the trade exploded over the past five years, while America itself became the source of funds after it slashed rates to 1pc at the end of the dotcom bubble, and held them there until June 2004 . . .

There are other big forces at work: huge purchases of US Treasuries by Asian central banks, and petrodollar surpluses coming back to the US credit markets. Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, warns that the carry trade is itself, in all its forms, a major cause of dangerous speculative excess.

"The lure of the carry trade is so compelling, it creates artificial demand for 'carryable' assets that has the potential to turn normal asset price appreciation into bubble-like proportions," he said.

"History tells us that carry trades end when central bank tightening cycles begin," he said. Ominously, almost every bank other than the Bank of England is now tightening in unison.

In other words, they're draining the swamp.

This is the moment of truth. Either people wakeup and realize that these parasites only control us because we let them, or in their relentless greed, they are going to suck up every last drop of currency that keeps our economies floating.

9/11 timeline

Monday, February 27, 2006

He who pays the PIPER...

...calls the tune.

In this case, the US may or may not have had to pay the piper. Nevertheless, the strong arm tactics the US employed in a failed effort to oust Elbaraedei in 2004 were apparently enough to persuade him to walk the straight and narrow this time around.

The U.N. watchdog, in a confidential report made available to The Associated Press, said Iran plans to start setting up thousands of uranium enriching centrifuges this year even as it negotiates with Russia on scrapping such domestic activity.

[that doesn't sound confidential to me]

* * *

The 11-page report . . . declared that - because of lack of sufficient cooperation from the Iranian side - the IAEA remained unable "to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran."

The finding was essentially an admission that the agency cannot establish whether Iran is hiding aspects of its nuclear program that it is obligated to report to the IAEA . . . under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The evidence of Iran's intention to embark on full-scale uranium enrichment appeared to jibe with news of lack of progress in talks between Moscow and Tehran . . .

* * *

Detailing some of Iran's foot dragging over the past month, as well as new findings of concern, the report [dutifully] said:

"Iran again declined to provide" a copy of a document located earlier by IAEA inspectors showing how to cast fissile uranium into the shape to fit a warhead.

[They 'located it earlier,' yet they still need a copy? What kind of inspectors are they? Don't they use James Bond-like cameras when they 'inspect?']

There were "inconsistencies" in tests of plutonium isotopes provided to the agency to help it look into plutonium separation experiments in the mid-1990s, suggesting that not all plutonium had been accounted for.

[That's nothing! "Some 380 tons of explosives powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control."]

Iran dismissed information based on U.S. intelligence documenting links between the so-called "Green Salt Project" - a precursor of uranium enrichment - with nuclear-related high explosives and warhead design as "based on false and fabricated documents."

House of Cards

Is there anyway out of this dilemma. Not really. The more people who pull out now the faster the house of cards is going to fall.

But, Patrick Killelea at Axis of Logic does an excellent job of outlining exactly why the house of cards is finally collapsing.

Why? Prices disconnected from fundamentals. House prices are far beyond any historically known relationship to rents or salaries. Rents are less than half of mortgage payments. Salaries cannot cover mortgages except in the very short term, by using adjustable interest-only loans.

Interest rates going back up.When rates go from 5% to 7%, that's a 40% increase in the amount of interest a buyer has to pay. House prices must drop proportionately to compensate. 82% of recent Bay Area loans are adjustable, not fixed . . .

A flood of risky "home equity loans." An adjustable-interest home equity loan[s] . . . do not have defined limits on interest demands. When the interest rate adjusts upward, it can double monthly payments.

Massive job loss. More than 300,000 jobs are gone from Bay Area since the dot-com bubble popped. This is the worst percentage job loss in the last 60 years. It's worse than Detroit car problems or Houston's oil bust. People without jobs do not buy houses and owners without jobs may lose the house they are in. Even the threat of losing a job inhibits house purchases. Santa Clara County posted its fourth straight year of job losses in 2005, so it's not over yet.

Population loss. San Francisco continues to lose population at the fastest rate of any city in the US and most of those are professional jobs. The problem is not only the dot-com crash, but also the outsourcing technical jobs to India, which continues at a frantic pace as corporations realize they can pay an Indian only 20% of what they must pay a similarly qualified employee in the Bay Area. Fewer people in the Bay Area means less demand for housing. It recently (Aug 2005) cost $3623 to rent a UHaul from San Jose to the midwest, but only $1800 to move the other way. This is because far more people are moving out of the Bay Area than are moving in.

Stock market crash. The NASDAQ at about 2000 is still only 40% of the 5000 it was at the peak of the recent stock market bubble. The crash in the NASDAQ probably hit the Bay Area harder than anywhere else because of all the stock held by employees of tech companies. That money would have been spent on housing, but is now gone.

Extreme use of leverage. Leverage means using debt to amplify gain. Most people forget that losses get amplified as well. If a buyer puts 10% down and the house goes down 10%, he has lost 100% of his money on paper. If he has to sell due to job loss, he's bankrupt in the real world. Even a small price decline will bankrupt buyers with small equity. Buyers foolish enough to buy with no money down are already bankrupt, but still unaware of the fact.

Shortage of first-time buyers. According to the California Association of Realtors, the percentage of Bay Area buyers who could afford a median-price house in the region plunged from 20 percent in July 2003 to 14 percent in July 2004. Strangely, the CAR then reported that affordability fell another 4 percent in 2005, yet claims affordability is still at 14%. [maybe because there are fewer people!]

Surplus of speculators. Nationally, 25% of houses bought in 2005 were pure speculation, not houses to live in.[WOW!] It is now possible to buy a house with 103% financing. The extra 3% is to cover closing costs, so the buyer needs no money down. All this is on the unwise assumption that housing will rise ever higher, covering interest payments through appreciation. Even the National Association of House Builders admits that "Investor-driven price appreciation looms over some housing markets." [call it what it is, GAMBLER-driven price appreciation]

Lightbulbs going on in many brains in the Bay Area: "Hey, I can just go to New Mexico or Oregon, buy a gorgeous house outright, and comfortably retire on the price difference. My neighbors just did it, so I'll have friends there too."

Trouble at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They are now being forced to tighten up sloppy lending. This means they are not going to keep buying very low-quality loans from banks, and the total money available for buying houses is falling. [of course, when fannie and freddie FAIL, tax payers PAY, and banks have gotten away scot free!]

Visit their site to read more about WHO disagrees with these rock solid assessments, what they have to gain from claiming the market is rosey, and why they are thoroughly WRONG.

Incidentally, this is what the author suggests that you do if you're a homeowner/speculator:

If you own, consider selling so can [sic] actually keep some of thatfunny money that appeared out of thin air. It would be a pity to watch it vaporize back into thin air. There is no real profit until you sell. [and leave someone else with the worthless purchase!]

If you want to buy, look around and see that house prices are falling. Why hurry to buy now? [watch the suckers bleed, and] Save your cash and buy for much less in the future. Find a nice cheap rental, sit back, and enjoy the show till then.

Too bad, it's more likely that, by this time next year, you'll need that barrel of cash just to pay for food and gasoline!

"This is basically an assassination programme. That is what is being conceptualised here. This is a hunter-killer team," said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East.

"It is bonkers, insane. Here we are - we're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams."

"They are being trained by Israelis in Fort Bragg," a well-informed intelligence source in Washington said. "Some Israelis went to Iraq as well…

An Israeli official said the IDF regularly shared its experience in the West Bank and Gaza with the US armed forces, but said he could not comment about cooperation in Iraq.

"When we do activities, the US military attaches in Tel Aviv are interested. I assume it's the same as the British. That's the way allies work. The special forces come to our people and say, do debrief on an operation we have done," the official said. "Does it affect Iraq? It's not in our interest or the American interest or in anyone's interest to go into that. It would just fit in with jihadist prejudices."

"Jihadist prejudices?" Right.

And to flesh out that image Robert Fisk filed this report of the Independent on 26 May 2004.

And let's cast our eyes upon that little, all-important matter of responsibility. The actual interrogators accused of encouraging US troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contacts with Israel. The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defence minister.

According to Dr J P London's company, CACI International, the visit of Dr London - sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including US congressmen and other defence contractors - was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defence and homeland security agencies".

The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only US citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib - but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship. The once secret report by US General Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.

General Taguba mentions Steven Staphanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Staphanovic, who worked for CACI - known to the US military as "Khaki" - was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' ... he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse". One of Staphanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan - who was not named in the Taguba report - now says that he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq…

[I]t is clear the torture trail at Abu Ghraib has to run much further than a group of brutal US military cops, all of whom claim "intelligence officers" told them to "soften up" their prisoners for questioning. Were they Israeli? Or South African? Or British? Are we going to let the story go?

[T]here is one country that seems the logical place to go for "expertise" in the "art" of torturing Arabs, and that is Israel. Those hoods the prisoners were made to wear, befouled by excrement (and probably pig fat), are an Israeli innovation, so to speak. Furthermore, tales of sexual humiliation are rife among Palestinians who fall into the hands of the Israeli police authorities. The news that the Israelis have been "advising" the Americans on the ins and outs of managing an occupation surprised no one, and the leaked report of General Antonio Taguba mentioned the presence of "third country nationals" at Abu Ghraib. If this was a program run amok, then wouldn't the hatred of Israeli "interpreters" for their Arab victims figure as a factor in all this?

Now with war on Iran and Syria looming on the horizon, do you really think the Israelis are not already "in country" and raring to go?

Trading PORTS

There's an interesting quid pro quo analysis at FXstreet of recent resignations at the Fed, the fall of the dollar, the coming invasion of Iran, and the recent ports deal with DPW. No doubt trading ports makes very good sense. But, can it be as simple as quid pro quo? I don't think so.

Turnover continues at the top posts of the Federal Reserve, and the inexperience we find leading this institution is alarming at a crucial time when U.S. monetary policy is going where no man has gone before, where the U.S. Dollar's status as the world's currency reserve is about to be whacked.

* * *

Fed Governors and Regional Bank Presidents are treated like gods. They have enormous power, prestige, and presence. Why quit? Why the wholesale resignations? Could it have to do with what's coming down the pike? . . . Could it be that the previous cadre of Fed leaders do not have the stomach for what is about to go down?

* * *

The last time a Middle Eastern nation announced it was going to accept only Euros for oil, President Bush ordered the invasion of that country . . . Next on the agenda may be Iran.

* * *

Now we find out this week, stunningly, that this Republican administration has not only agreed to hand over management of six of America's key seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates, Dubois Ports, but when Republican Congressional leadership said it wanted a delay to study the decision and would pass legislation to accomplish this, Bush came out as passionate as we have ever seen him that he would veto any such legislation, that this deal will go through, like it or not. Bush has never vetoed any legislation in his six years in office, but he is ready to veto this one?

Why? What's the rush? Take a look at the following map. The United Arab Emirates just happens to be directly south of Iran, and on the opposite bank of the strategic Strait of Hormuz (or Ormuz). Quid pro quo? Are U.S. troops, warplanes, and Naval vessels headed for the United Arab Emirates in exchange for the collateral of United Arab Emirates' occupation of our U.S. seaports?

The author makes some very good points. But, has anyone considered who runs DPW?

Dubai, 24 January 2006: - Global ports operator DP World today welcomed news that one of its senior executives, Dave Sanborn, has been nominated by US President George W. Bush to serve as Maritime Administrator a key transportation appointment reporting directly to Norman Mineta the Secretary of Transportation and Cabinet Member.

The White House has issued a statement from Washington DC announcing the nomination. The confirmation process will begin in February.

Mr Sanborn currently holds the position of Director of Operations for Europe and Latin America for the Dubai-based company

Mohammed Sharaf, CEO, DP World said:“While we are sorry to lose such an experienced and capable executive, it is exactly those qualities that will make Dave an effective administrator for MarAd. We are proud of Dave’s selection and pleased that the Bush Administration found such a capable executive. We wish him all the best in his new role.”

Ted Bilkey, Chief Operating Officer, DP World said:“Dave’s decades of experience in markets around the world, together with his passion for the industry and commitment to its development, will allow him to make a positive contribution to the work of the Maritime Administration. We wish him well for the future.”

Mr Sanborn, a graduate of The United States Merchant Maritime Academy, joined DP World in 2005. He previously held senior roles with shipping lines CMA-CGM (Americas), APL Ltd and Sea-Land and has been based, besides the US, in Brazil, Europe, Hong Kong and Dubai during his career. He has also served in the US Naval Reserve.

So, this guy Dave after having spent, what, less than a year at DPW, gets nominated for a top maritime position by BUSH, after which Bush immediately announces a major deal between the US and the company his maritime nominee just left??? (It's not clear that he was confirmed yet.)

There is more to this than meets the eye. Someone with Dave's background does not not seamlessly float through such a high profile position in a huge company for such a short period of time, and then end up with a high profile nomination in the US government BY CHANCE. This is part of a complex plan.

Is this quid pro quo? Or are these coporate entities all part of one overarching global command and control center?

Black State of the Union: Harry Belafonte

I have said that George W. Bush is a terrorist. I did not say that to be a "name caller." I did not say that to step out and quote, unquote, "disrespect the office off the presidency." I said that because I see that we have not taken charge of how we define our subjugation. We are living in terrorism as black people in America and it has been that way since the dawning of slavery.

If we are as oppressed as we are. If we're having the experiences we have in Katrina. If we're having the experiences we're having with our youth, with over 2 million in the prisons of America, the largest prison population in the world. If we're having problems with healthcare. If we're having problems with schools. If we're having problems with finding our own inner souls and dignity, to live out a life that is honorable. What is it that has put us in this position? We didn't volunteer for it.

And those who have put us here and [have resolved] to keep us here are people who deal in terror. And I think we need to not listen to how they see terror. We have to talk about how we see terror. And broaden the definition.

Murdering Dr. King was an act of terror. Murdering Malcolm X was an act of terror. The murdering of Edgar Meavers was an act of terror. The murdering of Emmet Till was an act of terror. Sending young men and young women, sons and daughters of America, to murder people in other nations is an act of terror. To have medicine that can heal the sick and comfort the dying and abstain from giving it generously is an act of terror. To keep our young men and women unemployed and buried in ignorance is an act of terror.

So I say, let us redefine terrorism. It is not just Bin Laden sitting in Afghanistan, if it is in fact he who did what they say he did.

It is how we as African-Americans, as people of color, as people who are ground under, it is how we choose to name the game. It is how we choose to create the definitions about our experience that must be recognized and honored. And the only way that can be done is for us to take charge of these facts. No oppressor has ever given freedom. Those who are oppressed have been required to take it.

We are facing a major conspiracy that is targeting Iraq’s unity. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani

…The belief that the attack was the work of American and Israeli covert-operations (Black-ops) is widespread throughout the region as well as among leftist political-analysts in the United States. Journalist Kurt Nimmo sees the bombing as a means of realizing “a plan sketched out in Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” (the balkanization of Arab and Muslim society and culture.) Nimmo suggests that the plan may have been carried out by “American, British or Israeli Intelligence operatives or their double-agent Arab lunatics, or crazies incited by Rumsfeld’s Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) designed to ‘stimulate’ terrorist reaction.”

Nimmo is not alone in his judgment. Other prominent analysts including, Pepe Escobar, Ghali Hassan, AK Gupta, Dahr Jamail, and Christian Parenti all agree that the Bush administration appears to be inciting civil war as part of an exit strategy.

The picture above shows Sunnis in Samarra demonstrating and condemning the bombing of the "Golden Dome", the Imam in the picture is a Sunni imam, you can tell from his white turban, Shia imams wear a black turban.

I want the readers to know that for Samarra inhabitants, the mosques doesn’t represents a Shia shrines only but represents the existence of the city also and they are very proud of them, even when the situation went very bad between Sunni and Shiia, Shiia pilgrimages to city never attacked by any group, it’s kind of unwritten code of honor.

Testimonies of two eyewitnesses near the bombed Dome:

Witness 1:

I live in a district very near to the mosque and I will tell you exactly what I saw hours before the bombing.

There is a daily curfew in our city (Samarra) starts from 8,00 in the evening until 6,00 in the morning, in the night before the bombing and just when it’s getting dark there was unusual activities by the ING in the area around the mosque, I heard their cars the whole night until next day in the morning.

The Mosque Guards testimony says: Four people with [Iraqi National Guard] ING uniforms blind folded them and set the bombs.

The witness continues, so ask I you how could the terrorists enter the area which is usually surrounded by the ING and enter the mosque then runway without being got by the police?.

Witness 2:

Witness 2 gives more detailed information and the Americans connection to the events before the bombing, so I made it as timeline of the events.

My name is Muhammad Al-Samarrai, I own an internet-cafe near the mosque, I sleep in my shop because I am worry about my computers from thieves.

8,30 (evening) joint forces of Iraqi ING and Americans asked me to stay in the shop and don’t leave the area.

9,00 (evening) they left the area.

11,00 (evening) they came back and started to patrol the area until the morning.

6,00 (next day morning) ING leave the area .

6,30 Americans leave the area .

6,40 first explosion.

6,41 second explosion.

He confirmed again that the curfew starts at 8,00 (evening) until next day 6,00 (morning), INGs and the Americans will surround and patrol the city all that time.

Former CIA analyst a and presidential advisor Ray McGovern does not rule out Western involvement in this week's Askariya mosque bombing in light of previous false flag operations that have advanced hidden agendas of the ruling elite.

During the mid-eighties, McGovern was one of the senior analysts conducting early morning briefings of the PDB one-on-one with the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

He joined Alex Jones to discuss many topics from martial law to government false flag terrorism and provocation tactics.

McGovern firstly suggested that Posse Comitatus, the law that forbids the military to take on a policing role within the US, is being systematically overthrown.

"Not only have the top ranks of the intelligence community been politicized and corrupted, so has the army. The military establishment is goose stepping around, saluting the President and saying whatever the President wants them to."

Jewish voice for peace.

As I have stated previously, the misconception about what Israelis actually believe is quite stunning. In fact, a majority of Israelis consistently believe that withdrawal from the West Bank is the answer. But then again, a majority of Palestinians also believe in the right of Israel to exist.

I found a group out there that believes in rationality. They actually examine evidence (rather than jumping to conclusions). They actually look at the facts as they are! (stunning, I know)

Please check out the Jewish Voice for Peace. It is my firm belief that a majority of Muslims and Jews do want to live in a peaceful world, but forces of manipulation often stir the shit pot.

South America on the Rise as US Declines

While the US repeatedly raises its debt ceiling, auctioning bonds by the billions to foreign creditors, South American countries continue to shed their foreign debt obligations.

[Venezuela] said in a statement late Saturday it plans to buy back about US$700 million (euro588 million) in Par and Discount Brady bonds around March 1.

The country will buy back an additional US$3.2 billion (euro2.7 billion) on dates of future interest payments, the ministry said.

The Brady bond repurchases would amount to about 15.2 percent of Venezuela's foreign debt obligations, a ministry official told Dow Jones Newswires. Venezuela's total outstanding public foreign debt stood at US$31 billion (euro26.1 billion) as of Dec. 31, according to preliminary ministry data.

Chavez is no fool. He knows the game.

Chavez has often claimed that such debt instruments are designed to benefit rich countries while saddling poorer ones with crippling interest payments. He has made buying back foreign debt an ongoing policy amid the government's surging revenues from oil exports.

Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

[It]will seek to pay off its loans with international creditors like the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank earlier than planned.

Other countries in Latin American have also made efforts to pay off foreign debt amid surging exports and a falling dollar. Brazil announced on Friday that it would buy back US$6.34 billion (euro5.32 billion) in the last of its Brady bonds.

Waste Culture, War Economy

It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country. – Raymond Chandler

I think my first wake up call came when I realized the emptiness inherent in the western way of life: in what I was taught in school were the only meaningful pursuits in life. Amusement, i.e. self-gratification, and the riches with which to buy the former. Drugs were a necessity of this lifestyle. Drugs and alcohol and other means of blinding one to the realities hidden behind the glittering surface, some of which I touch upon in my previous post.

Another thing was waking up to the fact that this regimented machine of work, pay, envy, debt, drugs, sex, work pay, envy and yet more debt drives this machine while the slaves running it service the machinists and are kept docile through distractions: the bread and circus of gratuitious sex and voyuerism that is entertainment. We're fools to buy into this. Fools to willingly believe in the manufactured dream-world that leaves us ignorant of the true state of things.

We bloggers like to boast of our ability to see through the lies of mainstream media, yet some of us fall for its more lurid aspects hoping to escape without ever questioning whether that flight into self-gratification and objectification is not a worse form of slavery. And if we can't see this any talk of "winning back our minds" is plain guff, if our minds turn to mush at the beck and call of what's between our legs. The painted image of yet another lie. Then we've lost. Then we've opted once more for the blue pill. Once more for the return to the safe cryonic womb that keeps us barely alive in order to feed off our energy.

Reading Camus at the age of seventeen was yet another wake up call. Passages such as: "One can never cease to wonder at the fact that all men live as if they knew nothing." This sparked the flame in me that wanted to know, wanted to pull away that veil between me and a simple cup of coffee, a buttercup pushing through concrete, the simple act of holding a loved one's hand in the rain, the fresh smell of bread outside the bakery at four in the morning. I sold my TV then. Haven't had one since.

How to describe that awakening? Camus did it best when he wrote:

"At times the set pieces collapse. Wake up, grab the streetcar, four hours at the office or factory, eat, streetcar, fours hours of work, eat, sleep, and monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday to the same rhythm – this routine is for the most part easy to follow. But one fine day the question occurs: why? - and thus the process is begun, in immense disgust coupled with amazement. 'Begun' is a crucial word here. Disgust is the last stage of a mechanical life, but it heralds a new forward movement in the mind. It awakens thoughts and calls forth what follows. And what follows is either an unconscious return to the chain or the irrevocable awakening."*

Around the same time I began smoking Camels, imitating Philip Marlowe. I intuitively identified with him as a role model. It was not that I wanted to be a detective, more the fact that there were so few men around you kind of had to go with the best you could find. And in Marlowe Chandler had set out to portray a man fit for these cheap times. Describing this man in The Simple Art of Murder he wrote:

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."

Of this man's opposite he wrote:

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

And of the sham, of this debased effegy we call "snivelization," where we're taught to believe in manufactured dreams at the cost of humanity, Chandler had this to say.

"This country through its enormous talent for manufacture has worked itself into an economy of overproduction, which is probably a permanent economy. Half the world is starving, or at any rate badly underfed, yet we have to have a new refrigerator and a new automobile every year or so. If we don’t, we feel inferior because we are made to feel inferior. The kind of economy we have can only continue to exist if there is an enormous artificial wastage of manufactured product. We get that kind of waste in a war. In time of peace you have to create it artificially by advertising (Raymond Chandler Speaking: Penguin, 1973)."

To fool onself into believing that the modus of the machine, the language of advertisement, the cheapness of the sell and what's being sold, the extent to which these things permeate our lives, does not affect us, does not put us to sleep, does not cheapen us as long as we remain unaware of it is probably the greatest lie of all.

Foiled Again

Iranian nuclear chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh said a basic agreement had been reached Sunday with Russia for the establishment of a joint uranium enrichment venture.

Dang!

Russia has said that its enrichment offer was contingent on Iran resuming a moratorium on domestic enrichment, but Iranian officials have rejected such a link and in the past insisted on their right to a domestic program.

Oh, good!

Asefi reiterated that Iran would continue its nuclear fuel research activities and would not give in its nuclear right under pressure and the "bullying language."

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Expect some extra-bullying language to emerge from the March 6th IAEA meeting.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

It's just a body… why do you care?

MONEY. money money money. It talks and the proverbial excrement of male bovine livestock walks, hiding behind the skirts of freedom of speech. Maybe not so much behind as beneath. Beneath the rosy skirt of "ideals," feigned childish innocence and faux naiveté people will talk about the beauty of images or viewing of pornography without ever considering how they got made, who was involved and in what manner. In this realm, detached from reality they are free to spout nonsense about their enjoyment and right to lust with no thought as to the consequences necessary to feed their lust.

Abstract words such as freedom, liberation and others get bandied about while the people abused in front of the camera, real people, who might represent real suffering, are nothing. "IT IS JUST A BODY… WHY DO YOU CARE???"

Why indeed. Because a great many of these "bodies" actually belong to human beings.

By the mid-1990s, one of the hottest places for commercial development was the Internet. In early September 1995 there were 101,908 commercial domains on the Web, up 26,055 sites from the end of July, and up 72,706 sites from the end of 1994. The sex industry was leading the way.

At the beginning of 1995, there were just 200 businesses on the World Wide Web selling "erotica services" and products, from condoms to pornographic videos. I did a search on Yahoo, a popular search engine, in August 1995 and August 1996. In August 1995, the category "Yahoo: Business and Economy: Companies: Sex" had 391 listings for phone sex numbers, adult CD-ROMS, X-rated films, adult computer software, live videoconferencing, prostitution tours, escort services and mail-order-bride agencies. In August 1996 there were 1,676 listings-a four fold increase in one year. In late 1997, according to Naughty Linx, an online index, there were 28,000 "sex sites" on the Web with about half of them trying to make money selling pornography, videos, or live sex shows…

Any item produced by the sex industry-magazines, videos, CD ROMS-is always much more expensive than similar non-pornographic materials. The high prices and profit margins of pornographic materials keeps the revenue and profit high for the sex industry. In 1996 Americans spent more than US$9 billion on pornographic videos, peep shows, live sex shows, pornographic cable programs, pornographic magazines and computer pornography. That amount is more than many other entertainment businesses, such as film, music, and theater (See Table 1). To put that amount in some context, according to War on Want, US$9 billion is enough to provide debt relief for the world’s 20 worst affected countries. These revenue figures don’t include the millions of dollars made illegally through the sale of women in brothels, massage parlors, or on the street, or the sale of illegal materials, such as child pornography.

The pimps on the Internet conduct their own market research on who is buying the women they offer. According to the Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), the largest pimp on the Web, the buyers for live strip shows are 90 percent male, 70 percent living in the United States, and 70 percent are between ages 18 and 40. The viewers are young men in college, and businessmen and professionals who log on from work. Naughty Linx reports there is a 22 percent decline every Summer, when college students cannot use university Internet connections to log on to sex industry sites.

Pimps on the Internet

The movement of the sex industry to the Internet has increased the demand for new and more extreme images of the sexual exploitation of women and children. Older images identified by color quality of the image or clothing and hairstyle are viewed with disdain. Buyers demand new images with the scenes of sexual exploitation and abuse that are in fashion among predators. The result is increased abuse and exploitation of women and children.

Act One Entertainment, USA, owned by William J. Heath, 37, of Royal Oak, Michigan, is known to have operated between September 1994 and November 1997. The operation, known to have pimped more than 300 women, sold strippers and prostitutes to men. He hired underage girls, filmed them stripping and being sexually abused by him and others. He then sold the images on the Internet. In November 1997, the owner, William J. Heath, was charged with criminal racketeering and production of child pornography. Two other men associated with Act One Entertainment were arrested. Johnnie Juretick, 31, was charged with producing sexually abusive material of children; and Jeffrey Scott Maxwell, 22, was charged with performing sex acts on underage girls. The girls were told they would receive royalties based on the number of people who bought their photographs.

Canada A mother was outraged when she saw pornographic pictures of her daughter on the Internet. Stephen Bauer, 24, was arrested on charges involving three children, aged 14-16, for making and distributing child pornography, being a person in authority permitting sexual activity, sexual exploitation, living on the avails of prostitution, and exercising control and communication with a person under age 18 for prostitution. Most of the girls exploited by Bauer were runaways, or from "broken homes." The girls were dressed in school uniforms, stripped, and used by men, while hidden cameras filmed them. Digital images and videos were transmitted live to an Internet site, which specialized in schoolgirls and skirt fetishes. The site was in operation for about 1 year and had about 1,000 subscribers, who paid $15 to $80 (Canadian dollars) for access to the site. Detective Mike Sullivan of the Illinois Naperville Police Department, USA, discovered the site. Other images on the Web site included images of girls as young as five being sexually abused…

A few of the pimps on the Web who started out selling women in audio prostitution are:

Seth Warshavsky, founder of Internet Entertainment Group, the largest live sex show producer on the web, started a phone sex business in 1990, when he was 17 years old;

Seth Warshavsky is the biggest pimp on the Internet. Founder and President of the Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), 25-year-old Warshavsky has been making money from the prostitution industry since he was a boy. While in grade school he ran a computer bulletin board; at age 17 he dropped out of school, moved out of his parents’ house and opened up a phone sex business with a friend using US$7,000 borrowed on credit cards.[192] His first phone sex number was called 1-800-GetSome.[193] In the beginning, if a buyer called the 800 number, an answering service would get the buyer’s credit card information, then page Warshavsky. He would have a woman call the buyer back. Soon after he started he was getting 50 to 60 buyers per day at US$39.95 per call. His phone sex business continued to grow so by 1995 he had an annual income of US$60 million.

The growth and expansion of the pornography and prostitution industries on the Internet have also increased the demand for new material, resulting in increased sexual exploitation of women. Fierce competition among pornography web sites has pushed pimps to advertise and present more and more extreme material, such as penetration with large objects, bestiality and bondage. Of course, making these images requires more violence against women…

"Natalia" While Warshavsky, owner of IEG, lives in a half million-dollar condo and drives a new Jaguar, "Natalia" is paid US$20/hour to strip and perform sex shows for buyers over the Internet. While "Natalia" claims that stripping makes her feel good about herself, "Natalia" is not her real name and she doesn’t want anyone to know she earns money this way. She says she strips for IEG because her other job does not pay enough to support her and her family. She conceals the stripping from most of her friends and family. She describes the depersonalization that other women in the pornography and prostitution industries undergo. She takes on another personality in order to act out the scenarios required. "Out there, I’m a completely different person than I am in here. This is my shadow side."

Ian Eisenberg, who runs the Web site Babes4U with Steffani Martin, and is still in the phone sex business, is the son of Joel Eisenberg, a pioneer of the phone sex business in the 1980s;

Steve Becker, who now works for Penthouse, ran a number of phone sex lines in New York.

…Other forms of explicit and extreme violence against women and children can be found on the Internet.

During an Internet search on rape, an activist found a Web site with a message from a man asking for someone to rape his wife because she didn’t like having sex with him. Visitors to this Web site left messages with their email addresses indicating that they were willing to rape the woman. Thanks to investigation and complaints to the Internet Service Provider, this Web site was taken down. Another woman found a Web site that promoted the "pre-planned violent rape of lesbians" as a way of "converting" them to heterosexuality. She lodged a complaint with the webmaster.

In Spring 1998, I found a web site called The Rape Zone. The home page featured a picture of a woman screaming as a man forced her against a wall with one hand around her throat and the other restraining her arm. The page title was underlined with a red bar that dripped blood. The site claimed to have over 1,000 images of rape and many video feeds. All of the images were of women tied-up, being beaten and penetrated with large objects. There were a number of images in which the women appeared to be bleeding. Memberships were being sold and viewers could purchase full-length videos…

The Internet industry exists today because of the prostitution industry. The pimps and buyers on the Internet are funding the development and expansion of the commercial Internet. In fact the pimps and buyers are also contributing heavily to the whole computer industry.

A male exhibitor at the Adultdex, a trade show for the online prostitution industry, who chose to remain anonymous, made this comment:

"The whole Internet is being driven by the adult industry. If all this [referring to products at an online prostitution industry trade show] were made illegal tomorrow, the Internet would go back to being a bunch of scientists discussing geek stuff in e-mail."

The sex industry is among the top five groups buying state of the art computer equipment. The high tech industries don’t like to admit or talk about how they are being supported by the pornography and prostitution industries. A high level technician for the film industry, another buyer of state-of-art computer technology, admits that many companies that brag about their capacities to create computer special effects for the film industry also do a good business with the pornographers and online pimps. It comes down to money,"if someone comes to us with a cheque for US$250,000….."

Looking at the astronomical growth and profits of the sex industry, it is easy to overlook the human cost. One can get lost in cyberspace or confuse glamorous numbers and digital images with real women and children. The profits of the sex industry are based on sexual exploitation, which starts with harm to real people. Sexual exploitation violates human dignity and bodily integrity and is a violation of human rights. The basic premise of international human rights is that people have a right to lives with dignity. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:

"All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights" (Article 1)

"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude" (Article 4)

"No one shall be subjected to torture, or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" (Article 5).

All of these principles of basic human rights are violated by sexual exploitation.

…Christian Valor, known as Se7en, spent 17 years in the hacker underground and didn’t believe the reports about increasing child pornography on the Internet. Then two crucial experiences connected and Se7en declared war on those who trade child pornography on the Internet. He acknowledged his own victimization and someone sent him child pornography. He was able to use empathy to understand and feel the harm from sex predators, which is grossly lacking in most people in the Internet and sex industries. "I myself was abused when I was a kid. Luckily, I wasn’t a victim of child pornography, but I know what these kids are going through." After receiving the JPEG image, he entered the underground of IRC chat rooms with names like "#littlegirlsex" and "#100%preteensexfuckpics." He found ftp (file transfer protocol) directories filled with image files like "6yoanal.jpg" and "8&dad.jpg," and newsgroups like "alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen."

Upon finding out the kind of horrible child pornography that exists, Valor promised a "genuine hacker terror" against child pornographers. On 8 June 1997 Valor posted a message on the mailing list for DefCon, the annual hacker’s convention. By mid-June he claimed that he had "taken down" a "major player," who was an employee of Southwestern Bell. He collected evidence and sent it to the President of Southwestern Bell, who replied a few days later that the man was "no longer on the payroll."[267]

Valor also seemed convinced that the police were not likely to intervene, and pointed out that the child pornographers could hardly complain to the police if he wiped out their hard drive by remote access.

Such declarations and action produced much anxious, hand wringing about "rights," and condemnation of "malicious, destructive hacking"- concerns and sentiments that are never expressed for the devastation of children’s lives caused by sexual predators. When solutions to illegal activities on the Internet are discussed, Internet industry people like to make excuses and say that nothing can be done to stop that particular criminal activity. During the discussion of Se7en’s war on child pornographers, one poster’s comment reveals what may be closer to the real situation: "The government can’t enforce laws on the Internet. We all know that. We can enforce laws on the Internet. We all know that, too."

Valor reminded the Internet community of what everyone likes to ignore, "…somewhere in the chain, someone is putting these images on paper before they get uploaded. Your freedom ends when you start hurting other people…"

…To counter these powerful alliances who are profiting from the sale and abuse of women and children is a small, but dedicated, international feminist movement for women’s rights. These women from around the world are demanding a redefinition of men’s use of women. They have made the crimes of battering and rape visible. Now, women are working to make the crimes of sexual exploitation visible. No longer is prostitution labeled as immoral behavior, or pornography called indecent pictures. Women human rights activists are naming the harm to women as violence and sexual exploitation, which violate women’s human dignity, human rights and chance for equal opportunities in society. In November 1996, at the international meeting, "Violence, Abuse and Women’s Citizenship" in Brighton, England, the conference organizers took an uncompromising stand against sexual exploitation by naming all forms of sexual exploitation, including prostitution, as violence against women.

"The steering group is uncompromisingly anti-prostitution. We do not recognise the false distinctions between forced and so-called free prostitution. There is no platform for a pro-prostitution position at this conference. We deliberately chose to have keynote speakers who reflected our own position on pornography and prostitution. We make no apologies for this choice; we have no regrets about it. We consider all of the issues discussed at this conference to be violence against women. It is unfortunately rare these days, for feminists to have access to a conference which is clear and uncompromising in its opposition to prostitution. We are glad that we have been able to give that space to women here who are working against the international sex industry. We hope it has given them strength in continuing their fight."

We are at a critical point for women’s human rights. We can go with the predator’s view that the Internet is just a new technology being used to transmit men’s entertainment. We can also choose to accept the pimp’s redefinition of pornography and prostitution as forms of sex work. Or we can begin to make real change to advance women’s dignity and equality, by defining forms of sexual exploitation as human rights violations and crimes against women, which we will not allow in our communities or on the Internet.

Friday, February 24, 2006

'Get ready for Operation Norwegian Freedom!'

Opening an oil bourse is becoming rather fashionable these days. The Prudent Investor reports on Norway's plans to open an oil bourse to compete with London's International Petroleum Exchange. It's decisive marketing edge?

According to an article at NRK.no that was translated by energybulletin.net Bourse director Sven Arild Andersen said already in December that it would be advantageous to trade oil in Euros.

Would you look at that! What's a fascist oil hungry corpocracy to do with all these pesky countries trying to get their grubby little hands into the global oil/currency trough at once?

"Here, you could trade crude oil, natural gas contracts and establish derivatives for these products."

"In addition, we must set up a larger financial industry around this, as important in other large markets and employ many people. And which are important for the competencies that are needed beyond the extraction itself of oil and gas," . . .

Andersen in [sic] of the opinion that Norwegian oil must be traded in Euros, which can be advantageous for international customers.

"We have performed market studies and both Russia, which is a large oil exporter, as well as the countries of the Middle East have large parts of their economies in Euros. They would be able to view such a bourse as a contribution to balancing their economies in a better manner than at present, where their products are traded solely in dollars."

Oh man!

[L]ooks like Norway needs a little taste of democracy, Neocon style. Get ready for Operation Norwegian Freedom! --Steve, a reader at The Prudent Investor

REJOICE! the economy is collapsing

This is the government's cue to tighten its domestic belt even further and raise interest rates yet again in order to entice magnamious investors to lend us their "hard-earned" money so we can continue our BANKRUPT and WAR-PRONE existence. We have no other choice, right?

WRONG.

Debt "prices" don't just magically plummet on their own. They are DRIVEN down by rapacious money-hungry moneylenders who know that when prices go down - interest rates go up.

Investors said the market could also be under some selling pressure as traders look to cheapen Treasury prices ahead of Thursday's auction of $14 billion of new five-year U.S. Treasury debt.

"The five-year auction is important to judge whether there is demand at these (yield) levels -- people will be paying attention to the indirect participation in the auction," John said.

[M]ost [investors] expect the Fed to raise interest rates twice more by May.

Now that it's painfully obvious that our debt-based financial system is hopelessly defunct and corrupt, it's time to seize the moment.

Wakeup! MONEYLENDERS are NOT INVESTORS. Calling them investors is a perverse distortion.

Moneylenders are exploiters, vampires, leaches and to top it off, their so-called money is nothing but a colossal SCAM. "Investors" are merely frontmen for bankers that create money from thin air. Often they ARE bankers.

Bankers don't earn the money they lend; they just create it from thin air and ask their mafia friends (other bankers) to accept it as a "promise to pay" (dollars) in return for other "promises to pay" (bonds) which, unlike their dollar counterparts, collect interest. This is PURE unadulterated INSANITY.

But, why? What makes bankers any more trustworthy than working Americans such that they can create "promises to pay" from THIN AIR while working Americans cannot?

Is it because bankers have other people's money in their vaults? So what? They didn't earn it. Moreover, it's never anywhere near enough to cover the loans they make on any given day.

And what do they do with all this pseudomoney? Attach REAL ASSETS and collect interest, of course.

And, why can they collect interest? Only banks are allowed to "issue credit." And they decide how much money is issued, who gets it, and on what terms. In other words:

So, people really have no other choice but to pay interest when they need money to conduct business. And working for someone else to secure money is a painful option in a labor market that is controlled by a handful of corporate profiteers (frontmen for moneylenders) who make their profits by wringing it out of workers' hides and consumer pockets.

And so it goes. This remarkable and devastating state of affairs is a result of a mind boggling abdication of Congress' exclusive Constitutional duty to issue and regulate coin.

The bottomline is that MONEY, fiat dollars in particular, are supposed to facilitate exchange ofproductivity - whether it's labor or the fruits of labor and resources, i.e., goods.

When, instead, it's issued to pay interest - which is NOT productive, yet nevertheless, accrues effortlessly - you end up with a cannibalistic economy that is UNSUSTAINABLE.

In crisis there is danger and opportunity. But, not as it's commonly understood.

A [Chinese] wēijī indicates a perilous situation when one should be especially wary. It is not a juncture when one goes looking for advantages and benefits . . . Any would-be guru who advocates opportunism in the face of crisis should be run out of town on a rail, for his / her advice will only compound the danger of the crisis.

The opportunity here is not the kind our rapacious "investors" look forward to - exploiting us in our time of need. On the contrary, the collapse of our financial system, as painful as it might be, provides a window of opportunity to emerge from the death grips of rapacious moneylenders and profiteers.

IRAQ IN CHAOS.

And so it seems, whoever bombed the mosques have achieved the goal they were seeking. Iraq is in chaos. There is a curfew in Iraq, children are being kidnapped, and...we are still in Iraq.

In other news, the cost of the Iraq War now reaches $250 billion. Are we paying for this as we go? HELL NO. Instead, we are paying for this with loans from often Middle Eastern nations! These countries, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates especially, are complicit in the war in Iraq. We are also getting billions of dollars in loans from China and Europe. Their money is what is paying for this debacle! And of course...they are not loaning at no interest. Given these are LOANS, our children and grandchildren will be footing this bill for decades to come. Think about it. $250 billion, with 5% interest that collects on itself...we will easily be paying a trillion for this war. Probably more. And what have we accomplished, other than lining the pockets of Halliburton and money lenders?

9/11 was an INSIDE job

Copyright violation for images of fornication!

Google was recently found (in a district court) to have violated the Copyright rights of Perfect 10, a company that produces nude images of women. The violation of the copyright was found in the linking images of google. Let me demonstrate below:You see the big arrow in the picture? It's pointing to the offending image in question. Well, not exactly. That's a Transformers image, and the images of Perfect 10 are naked women. But you get the general idea. (to get the transformers image, for edification, I typed in "cool" to the Google image search engine)

It was already determined in Kelly v. Ariba Soft that thumb nail images of this sort are sufficiently transformative, so as to constitute fair use. (and not be infringing)

With decisions like this recent one decided yesterday, I fear for the already tenuous "fair use" law. This is a 9th circuit district court that is not following a 9th circuit opinion. Will Google's picture search technology be long for this world?

Pressing away our freedom!

It was revealed today that a CBS correspondent listened to the Pentagon, and killed a story concerning improvised explosive devices in Iraq. It is already known that the U.S. and Britain used depleted uranium when they bombed Iraq. I am not quite sure when "improvised explosive devices" are, but they sure don't sound like flowers and puppies!

The story evidently was killed due to "security concerns." I am not exactly sure what security concerns they would be. It already is known that the place is being/was bombed to smitheerns...I am not sure what sort of "security concerns" there would be to show that yet another form of explosive is used in Iraq. The Pentagon Papers case was more closely related to potential national security concerns, and yet they were allowed by the Supreme Court. It appears that there is de facto censorship going on in this country, where the press simply listens to and accepts all that they are told when something is a "national security" concern. This is the same reason why the New York Times waited over a year to publish the story of the domestic wire tapping.

“But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.”-- H.R. Haldeman to President Nixon, Monday, 14 June 1971, 3:09 p.m. meeting.

Divide and Conquer

I wasn't going to comment on the bombing of the Muslim shrine in Samarra because it's very distressing to acknowledge that the world is swiftly reaching the point of no return as it barrels towards self-inflicted Armageddon. But, this account from Baghdad is worth sharing:

We woke up this morning to news that men wearing Iraqi security uniforms walked in and detonated explosives, damaging the mosque almost beyond repair. . . and several mosques in Baghdad were attacked. I think what has everyone most disturbed is the fact that the reaction was so swift, like it was just waiting to happen.

All morning we’ve been hearing/watching both Shia and Sunni religious figures speak out against the explosions and emphasise that this is what is wanted by the enemies of Iraq- this is what they would like to achieve- divide and conquer. Extreme Shia are blaming extreme Sunnis and Iraq seems to be falling apart at the seams under foreign occupiers and local fanatics.

No one went to work today as the streets were mostly closed. The situation isn’t good at all . . . There’s so much talk of civil war and yet, with the people I know- Sunnis and Shia alike- I can hardly believe it is a possibility. Educated, sophisticated Iraqis are horrified with the idea of turning against each other, and even not-so-educated Iraqis seem very aware that this is a small part of a bigger, more ominous plan…

It's not likely that we'll ever find out who planned and perpetrated this crime against Islamic culture - it seems no Mosque was spared. But, it's important to note that only people who want to be known would wear identifiable clothing and detonate explosives in broad daylight.

In fact, in another report from Basra:

[P]olice said gunmen in police uniforms broke into a jail, seized 12 Sunni men and later killed them, according to the Reuters news agency.

Whether or not these provocateurs were Iraqis, we may never know. But, that was the intended impression - all part of a broader plan.

The question is, whose plan? and how broad is it? In the meantime, as the world unravels before our eyes, we can only pray for an outcome that favors freedom from oppression. And, remember that Americans share the same fate as Iraqis if we allow the media to continue keeping us distracted and divided.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Everyone loves a little recognition

True, it's a nomination and not a win and recognition is not a goal in and of itself. Nevertheless, in this relentless battle of ideas, the nomination is much appreciated and much needed moral support in furtherance of the cause.

I hope everyone takes time to vote (it's not clear when. but if you find out let me know!).

Thanks Wampum, for noticing our efforts!

And many thanks to contributors and readers alike for sharing your time, your ideas, and your efforts and making this blog a fruitful endeavor.

Hopefully in 2007 we can say that in 2006 we won the ultimate REWARD for our efforts - freedom from oppression under the Federal Reserve.

Israelis play god

If Israel could stop the rain from falling from the sky above Palestine, it would. And it's doing everything in its power to make sure that Palestinians do not get from others what Israelis are intent on depriving them of.

"The United States proved that it would not support democracy after it cut its aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas won the elections. We will certainly help the Palestinians."[Iran]

* * *

"The incoming Palestinian leadership has to decide if it wants to be part of the legitimate international community or if it wants, through its own actions, to align itself with international pariahs."

Look who's calling who a pariah; since its inception, Israel has taken (and continues to take) billions of dollars in subsidies from US tax-payers.

Asked if Israel would try to block the Iranian money, [Israelis] replied that as the money would be going to a "terrorist" leadership, "we would be entitled to use all legal means to prevent that money from reaching its destination."

If there was any question that Israelis and their US supporters have an unparalleled lust for power and control over others, these actions unequivocally lay them to rest.

[I]t's one thing to be willing to work with a repentant government, and an entirely different thing to treat one that is still bent on your destruction as if they were nice guys.

These people truly believe their military might makes them right. They want an entire nation to "repent" for demanding the right to MUTUAL recognition.

But neither Israelis nor their US supporters are God, and their efforts to assume His control over others lives have already met with stiff resistance.

"The Egyptians,"[who give little money, but whose actions] "carry significant weight with the Palestinians and are watched by the rest of the Arab world," [said they] believed funds to the Palestinian government should continue for an indefinite period.

[Even Jimmy] Carter told CNN's Situation Room that Hamas is a 'disciplined' group, and that Israel and the United States 'should be positive about the changes that will come.'

As usual, however, Israelis pull out the Hitler hand to coerce people into assuming an uncompromising position with Palestinians, though the two cannot be compared, by any stretch of the imagination.

This blindness is the same kind that existed when Hitler was rising to power, and though he was defeated, Israel and the world has lived with the consequences of that blindness to this day. It's way past time for eyes to be opened.